Being Used

In the past 24 hours I have watched Anti Gay Marriage Amendments on ballots in ten states pass with wide margins of victory. Oregon, the eleventh state facing one of these amendment battles remains undecided but the Anti Gay Marriage folks are claiming victory. Some members of the gay community here in Lexington are encouraged by the fact the vote on our amendment was closer here than anywhere else in the state.

I am not encouraged. I am hurt and frightened, offended and angry. I am hurt by the legislature’s choice to go beyond the insult of DOMA. The amendment that has just passed in Kentucky goes from official pretence that my marriage doesn’t exist to official discrimination against all people they deem unmarried. I am frightened because we have stepped back from a position of discriminating against gay people to a position of discriminating against unmarried people. I am offended that people who do not even know me believe my marriage is of less value because my wife and I are of the same gender. But I am most angered by the fact that my wife and I have been used as a weapon of the extreme right to hurt single parents, children of unmarried couples, seniors who cannot afford to marry under current law, and others who for one reason or another fall into the category of unmarried individuals.

I am not a political pawn. I am a person. Like most people, I deeply resent being used.